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PROJECT SUMMARY

Like an echo, thousands of people connected leave each day behind them a trail that remains in cyberspace while they are AFK (Away From Keyboard). And this expands and grows greedy fueled by the social technologies of our Digital Era. It’s what is called the Ghost, a piece of the human spirit that, as a tear that is mixed with the rain, forms a common virtual global footprint and represents a new type of human heritage. But how will be this Ghost in the future?

Tears in Rain is an artistic and digital immersion into this question that finds a possible answer in the future of Madrid of 2109 visualized by Rosa Montero in her book Tears in Rain, which follows the life of a female replicant while covers contemporary subjects such as memory, emotions, relationships, war, poverty, climate change and pollution, sex, racism, corruption, the right to life and live it with dignity, death…

That’s how this project collects some of the passages from Montero’s book and, in a surreal way, recreates them inside a virtual ecosystem, in the trail of the Ghost, in what is, above all, a song to the essence of life and the memory.

Aesthetics

Aesthetics of Tears in Rain are inspired by the anime Ghost in the Shell and Blade Runner film because, like Tears in Rain book, these cyberpunk stories present a realistic and possible future that holds a debate on this new type of human heritage.

Concept and description

Tears in Rain is a 3D digital work shown and performed in various galerist spaces in the virtual world of Second Life and whose skeleton consists of three main stages, linked by the near future, the present of 2109 and the far future, re-thought and based on their original versions designed respectively for the SL9B , the Academy of Fine Arts of Brera (Milan, Italy) and the celebrations of the centenary of the University of Western Australia (Australia): Future Communities, Lacrime nella pioggia and Alien Humanity, now renamed as:

“Making of a replicant”, Scenario 01: Inside an in-vitro conception between virtual and organic life hybridization, held by the trinity concept (organic, virtual and spiritual), Future Communities talks about the birth of a new community of transgenic human beings: the technohumans or replicants.

“Madrid 2109”, Scenario 02: follows the inner evolution and awakening of Bruna Husky, the replicant and main character of Montero’s book, through 16 memory fragments.

“Alien Humanity”, Scenario 03: inspired in a certain way in Mariko Mori‘s installation Oneness, in space terraformation and in an experiment based on empathy and mirror neurons, is concerned about what comes next, after the end, after the apocalypse, with a sacred family of extraterrestrial beings trying to recover the human specie with other artificial conception.

Around these three scenarios, is performed “I Bruna, I Replicant”, a transmedia initiative that is both a tribute to Rosa Montero, due to of her proximity to her readers, and the representation of the moment in which a reader begins to empathize with a character.

Special collaboration of the author of the book, her publishing houses and her readers

Rosa Montero chooses and puts the voice of the fragments of the stage 2 and she’s the Bruna of fragments 01 and 08, the publishing houses of her Tears in Rain (Seix Barral, Salani Editore, Porto Editora, Amazon Publishing, Éditions Métailé, Muza SA…) give the first chapter to be uploaded and used for this project and some of her readers contribute via Montero’s facebook with their self-portraits characterized as Bruna Husky for “I Bruna, I Replicant”.

Spaces in Second Life where you can visit Tears in Rain and schedule

This artistic project tries to weave an exchange net between cultural groups in Second Life around the fragments of Rosa Montero’s book and, therefore, is widespread across time and space in these virtual galleries: